IDIOTS VANDALISE ARTHUR HEAD

Drunken idiots left a trail of damage and empty beer and liquor bottles at Fremantle’s historic Arthur Head on the weekend that had local artists shaking their head and asking how much longer this will continue until the City of Fremantle installs CCTV and additional lighting in the area.

Most of the solar lights along the Bathers Beach dune path were vandalised, a car had its back, site and windscreen windows smashed and several windows of the J Shed art studios were damaged by rocks. Jenny Dawson who is working on a huge public artwork for Elizabeth Quay in Perth was clearly worried that the work she and Sandra Black have been working on for many months might get vandalised before it is being installed early next year.

One door of the brand new cute change rooms next to Kidogo Arthouse was also damaged by the mindless morons who get a kick out of vandalism.

Send an email to the local representatives and ask again, that they work with the City of Fremantle to protect this area with CCTV and help organise a grant for more cameras and CCTV coverage. It wont be long before more of the wrong sort of attention is placed on the State’s oldest building, the Roundhouse and its permanently damaged.

Bouquets to the CoF Maintenance Department for responding so quickly to our call at this busy time of the year and arranging necessary repairs. Thanks also to the contractors who undertook the work – whilst there will be no chimney for Santa to come down this year, we are hopeful that it will be restored for Christmas 2016. Thank you 🙂

The answer is to declare Arthur’s Head a “drunk free zone”, then the police can test the roaming vandals and give them a free bed in the lock up for the night. Temporary rendition. The American design/Chinese made Foscam cameras allow inexpensive WiFI CCTV…. at about $100 to $200 each. Every at risk structure could be monitored at Arthurs Head. The software Blue Iris allows up to 65 cameras to be recorded simultaneously and stored for days on a conventional computer drive. Simple & cheaper. The other option would have been to declare the historic area “alcohol free” but the very opposite result has been impaled upon the area which will become The Piddler on the Roof vomit garden. (see my September post prediction)

Last week vandals took a shopping trolley to Bathers Beach and left it on the shoreline. They also removed the big rope from Kidogo’s pot plants and left that on the sand. While there I noticed Kidogo had to put metal on their new jarrah seating as the precious skateboarders were already ruining the edges. Today there was a hay bale left at the wooden gazebo, which will make nice kindle for the little bastards. And this is just the start of summer. Oh if only we could afford CCTV and security in Freo. (Was it $600,000 spent on planning the new Kings Square so far?)

This is the norm at Arthurs Head since the crowds increased at weekends.

One of the idiots kicking in cars later fell off the cliff. He was screaming and looked injured but his mates carried him away before the police arrived.

Meanwhile the cyclone fence, on the grass beside the Round House, is to protect the repair to the wall. Damaged when another group of vandals were gouging out the rocks and chucking them at the apartments over the road.

The Gunners’ Cottage – administration office of the Fremantle Volunteer Heritage Guides from the Round House did not escape unscathed either with a chimney being ‘demolished’ and a ventilator dislodged from the roof and damaged beyond repair. The back ‘garden’ was also littered with rocks tossed from the pathway above.

I’d much rather see council focus on core business, eg lighting, CCTV, security, pathways, rubbish removal, street trees, public gardens and historical buildings that benefit all the ratepayers, than all the non-core activities that seems to benefit an exclusive few.

We cant afford the basics but how much money is wasted on pet projects for small groups, pseudo sustainability initiatives, reports and studies without outcomes, financially assisting private businesses, events companies and property developers, funding anti government protests, providing council staff parking, 1000s of hard copy publications, consultants, training, travel… And so it goes on. It’s all non essential. We could lose the lot without a problem and save millions of dollars.

So how did it get to this point? If you’ve ever worked in government you’ll know many employees just love spending other people’s money to make their jobs more interesting and more socially rewarding. Snouts in the trough so to speak. The benefit to the majority of tax/ratepayers is the least concern.